The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies)

by Terry Brennan

  “Never,” mumbled the driver, barely audible beneath the deafening din.

  “Then why does it feel like a sauna in here? The heat is just pouring out from the back of the car.”

  Tom could feel the temperature rise dramatically on the back of his neck, like the heat of a sunburn. He put one hand at the base of his skull and was assailed by the acrid smell as the hair on his fingers was singed. He pulled Annie away from the back of the seat, fearful that a fire had erupted in the rear of the Land Rover. “Hey—”

  The sandstorm stopped.

  And the heat disappeared.

  Silence.

  “it’s over?”

  “Impossible,” mumbled the driver.

  “But there’s no noise … no wind,” said Joe.

  “No sand,” said Rizzo.

  Tom heard the conversation, and while he realized that the fury of the storm had subsided, his eyes weren’t on the others in the car. Instead he was looking in the back of the car past Annie’s head. Blackened spots seeped through the gun bag that held Aaron’s staff, and the plastic storage bin alongside the bag was melting along its length.

  “Impossible,” repeated the driver. “These storms last for hours.”

  Tom withdrew his shirt from Annie’s head and nodded toward the back of the car. “Maybe not. C’mon, Annie, let’s get out and take a look around.”

  Kalil Unifa knelt in the lee of his car, his jacket wrapped tightly around his head. Varun pressed as tightly into the metal as his leader.

  “We can see nothing, Kalil,” Varun shouted near his ear. “Bring the men in.”

  The jacket was poor protection. Unifa had a mouthful of sand particles, his ears were stopped up, and visibility was long gone. “No, find the goggles. We must keep looking.”

  Sand fell onto his head as he pushed open the back door of the Rover, but it was the deposit of the storm, not its presence. Bohannon leaned his shoulders out the door and looked up, between a break in the tent. The sky above was blue and bright. He looked forward, past the front Rover. Twenty feet beyond where the Rovers were parked, the sandstorm raged. Tom ducked back into the vehicle, looking first at Annie, then at the weapons bag in the back. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  They stood between the two vehicles, their heads craned backward, looking in all directions. Surrounding them, on all sides, was a roiling wall of wind-blown brown grit. But where they stood was quiet, peaceful, separate.

  Tom held the gun bag by its strap, dangling it in front of him, afraid to touch it lest—what?

  Rizzo came up to Tom’s side. “Hey, why don’t you check out the stick, Tom?”

  Looking down, Tom held the gun bag out toward Rizzo. “Curious? Here.”

  “Yo. I’m already short. I don’t need to be deaf and dumb, too. You touch it.”

  The idea came unbidden, but clear as the sky above them. Tom looked at the bag, took a breath. God, help me. Then he started walking away from the Rovers, toward the storm. With each step he took, the storm got no closer. Ten, twelve, fourteen steps and still the wildly whipping waves of sand remained as far in front of him as they had when he started.

  Annie was at his side.

  “Tom!”

  “I know.” He turned to the others, open-mouthed between the Land Rovers. “Come on. Let’s get moving while we can. I have no idea how long this might last.”

  Bohannon’s Land Rover was now in the lead, Kabir’s close behind, almost knit to the back bumper. And the calm in the midst of the storm traveled with them. It was like driving in a tunnel. Even the sky above them was obliterated by the roaring storm. But down here, as they exited the wadi and swung west following the compass, around the edges of Abraham’s Oasis toward Al Asad, a miraculous calm enveloped both the cars and the people in them. And the faster they drove, the faster the storm opened in front of them.

  The driver demanded Bohannon sit in the back of the vehicle, not next to him. “Don’t point that thing anywhere near me.”

  But as they raced across the desert flats toward the air base, Rizzo on one side, Annie on the other, Rodriguez draped over the back of the front seat, Bohannon held the gun bag gingerly in his lap. He looked up at his wife. “What do you think?”

  “I’m dying to see what’s inside,” said Annie.

  Rizzo bent over and peeked around Tom, his eyes wide. “How soon do you want to get your wish?”

  “Sammy, if the staff was a danger to us, we all would be dead by now,” she responded. “Go ahead, Tom. Open it. We’ve got to know.”

  The old Subaru’s engine cranked in paroxysms of grinding protest, as if ripping itself apart from the inside. Kalil Unifa coughed violently and punched the steering wheel. Even if he knew where to go, even if he knew where the rest of his men were at this moment, he wasn’t going anywhere. Building in intensity, the wind buffeted the car even more viciously, and new, thicker clouds of sand streamed in through unprotected openings, replacing more and more of the vanishing oxygen.

  Kalil called out to Allah, cursed his luck, coughed up blood, and dreaded his next breath.

  Images from the Bible dashed through Bohannon’s mind as he inched open the zipper on the weapons bag. What would he find inside? A budding almond tree? A slithering snake? I hate snakes!

  As he pulled back the flap of the bag, Bohannon tried to prepare for almost anything. Except this.

  It was still a stick. Dead. Petrified like a stone.

  “Doesn’t look very powerful, does it?” Rizzo leaned a hand toward the shaft, then stopped. “Well, maybe I’ll let you handle Moses’s missile launcher … just in case.”

  “There’s the air base,” said Joe.

  Bohannon looked up as the perimeter fence of Al Asad emerged from the blowing brown of the sandstorm. As they came closer to the fence, the area clear of the sandstorm now extended before them in an ever-lengthening avenue of early evening sunshine and blue sky.

  “Over there,” Bohannon pointed over the driver’s shoulder. “It’s a gate.”

  He felt the heat just as Rizzo opened his mouth. “How are we …”

  The jolt of heat raced through Bohannon’s right hand and up his arm just as the two halves of the cyclone fence gate blasted inward, off their hinges. The Land Rovers continued moving at high speed toward the long strip of concrete that opened before them. The sandstorm was still raging, but now it was raging on either side of this long runway. The rest of the base, even the control tower, was invisible.

  Annie screamed when the voice came from Bohannon’s wrist.

  “Tom, is that you in those Land Rovers?”

  Krupp!

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah. Thank God you guys got here. We would have been forced to turn back soon. So what happened down there? That sandstorm had everything absolutely obliterated. Then, all of a sudden, you guys just appeared. You made it look like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. That sandstorm opened up just like the parting of the Red Sea. Pretty cool special effect. Something tells me I know how you pulled it off. Found it, didn’t you?”

  “Alex, we’ve got a lot to talk about. But how about you get us out of here?”

  “We’re on our way. Wait for us at the western end of the runway. We’ll be down in less than two minutes.”

  Kabir’s driver pulled up to the concrete about two-thirds of the way down, his vehicle facing the runway. Bohannon noticed that Whalen’s car continued on another twenty or thirty yards and came to a stop with its front windshield facing away from the runway. Precautions. Just like Whalen.

  As they all piled out of the Rovers, Tom could see the jet turning into its approach run to the air base from the east. There wasn’t a lot of time. Rodriguez was pulling gear out of the car. “Go ahead. Say goodbye,” said Joe. “I’ll be there in a minute.” Tom, Annie, and Rizzo walked toward the other Land Rover.

  Mike Whalen met Tom halfway as Annie and Rizzo continued toward Kabir. Tom turned toward the ex–Navy SEAL, another man to whom they o
wed their lives.

  “Don’t think about it,” said Whalen, reading Bohannon’s thoughts. “It’s what we trained for.” Whalen grasped Bohannon’s left shoulder with a level of intensity and sincerity that sent a powerful message. “It’s been a pleasure, Tom. A pleasure to play even a small role in what God’s got cooking here. And a pleasure to know you. You’re a good man, Bohannon. A man after God’s own heart. He can do a lot with that. I’ll be praying for you.”

  His eyes blinking, perplexed, Tom tried to absorb the significance of all Whalen just shared when Steve Vordenberg and Fred Atkins joined their boss.

  “Good luck, Bohannon,” said Atkins. “Stay safe.”

  “And ask Annie to put in a good word with Vince Kasper,” said Vordenberg. “I could use a long vacation after all this excitement.”

  “Oh! Wait,” said Whalen, turning and jogging back to their Rover. Tom looked over his shoulder. He didn’t see what he expected. Annie, saying goodbye to Kabir. Instead, Annie was waiting, right behind him. “I already said goodbye,” she grabbed his hand as she looked into the sky at the approaching jet. “Oh, Tom. Are we finally going home?”

  It was Rizzo talking with Kabir. Kabir pulled his curved dagger from its scabbard and, with it laying across his open palms, handed it to Rizzo, who promptly slashed it through the air while dancing around the sheik. Kabir’s laughter echoed off the walls of sand.

  “Annie … here …” Whalen called from the other Rover. “You can’t forget these.”

  Hanging from his raised fist Whalen was holding her camera bag. Annie walked over to the Rover while Tom went in Kabir’s direction.

  “Who knows what images you’ve got in your cameras,” said Whalen, “maybe another cover.”

  Annie took the cameras in her left hand and threw her right arm around Whalen.

  “Thanks, Mike. I owe you big-time.”

  “Great. Just get me a credit when you score that next cover. Comes with a nice bonus, you know?”

  Rizzo was just walking away, still waving the dagger above his head, when Tom came up to Kabir.

  Sometimes, words fail a man. Even in those most crucial moments. When the depth of a heart can only be shared by the sincerity of a look. Kabir shared one of those looks with Bohannon and communicated a lifetime.

  “I would have enjoyed meeting you earlier, too,” said the sheik, stealing the words from Tom’s mind. His fingers touched his heart then his lips as he bowed his head in Tom’s direction. “May the miles be good to you and bring you safely home.”

  In the distance, they heard the screech of tires on concrete. Time was short. “Thanks for taking care of Annie when—”

  Mayhem made a landing with the Gulfstream.

  46

  6:34 p.m., Al Asad air base, Iraq

  Thump. Thump. Thump. The pounding noise shocked their ears and joined in the ripping rattle of death that advanced down the runway.

  Bohannon’s head snapped to the east as two attack helicopters swept out of the edges of the storm, their cannons drowning out the whomp of the rotor blades, tearing up the concrete at a couple hundred rounds per minute as they advanced on the still rolling form of the Gulfstream.

  “Militia!”

  It sounded like a hundred muffled voices shouting at once while everything and everyone was moving at the same time. “Take cover. Get off the runway. Get to the airplane.”

  “Get down,” Joe yelled, grabbing Sammy by the shoulder and pulling him into the lee of the Land Rover. Rizzo skidded along the concrete on his knees, crashing into the rear tire with his left hip, pain rushing down his legs like runaway electricity. But as soon as he hit the tire, Rizzo was back up on his feet, peering through the Rover’s window as the choppers swept past, their cannons pumping lead.

  Spinning on his heel, Tom shot a frantic glance down the runway as he began to run west, not toward the Gulfstream, but toward the Land Rover. Whalen had grabbed Annie and pushed her down against the flank of the vehicle, away from the oncoming choppers, while he joined Vordenberg and Atkins pulling weapons from a compartment underneath the vehicle’s floor. Before Tom could call Annie’s name, the three combat veterans were launching a fusillade at the swooping choppers. The fury and intensity of their onslaught forced the helicopters to peel away from the landing strip in opposite directions, but the pilots kept their cannons churning, and Tom kept running, as cannon rounds ripped across the back of the Land Rover, shattering glass and shredding metal as the vehicle shook like a dishtowel in a hurricane.

  Reaching the Rover, Tom launched himself, covering Annie’s body with his own as the roaring fury of the helicopters moved away from the airstrip and the world around them slipped from bedlam to terror. Raising his head, Bohannon saw Kabir’s body lying on the runway, blood bubbling from a series of wounds on his back. He started to rise, to run to Kabir’s aid, when the helicopters banked hard for a return run.

  “Stay down,” Joe roared. “I’m going to help.” He was off, running toward Kabir’s bloody body.

  “Fat chance of that,” Rizzo mumbled to himself. Are there any of those weapons in this car? Rizzo pulled open the back door of the Land Rover. In the distance he could see the helicopters making wide turns inward, turning back toward the airstrip as the Gulfstream pulled into an open hangar halfway down the concrete. He jumped on the back seat and steadied himself on the seatback with his left hand as he reached down and tried to pull up the floor of the Rover. A pulsing heat passed through his left hand and along his arm. Rizzo turned to his left where his hand was resting on the gun bag. “Holy guacamole, Moses’s missile launcher.”

  Rizzo grabbed the pulsing bag and dragged it behind him as he crawled along the seat to the far side, pushed open the door, and jumped down to the runway.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. The helicopters had straightened out and were bearing down on the hangar, cannons blazing away nonstop.

  Running to the front of the Rover, Rizzo pulled the bag to his chest.

  One of the choppers fired off two rockets that slammed into the concrete runway on either side of the hangar, its cannons shredding a third of the metal building into twisted knots.

  The bag was longer than he was tall. Rizzo reached up and yanked on the zippers and the flaps of the bag fell away.

  Rizzo quickly looked around. Joe was leaning over Kabir. Whalen had come out from behind the Rover with some big gun planted on his hip and was blasting away at the oncoming choppers.

  Rizzo grabbed Aaron’s staff, long and unwieldy, by the crook and pulled it into his side, his left hand trying to balance its surprising weight while his entire body infused with heat.

  His hands began to glow.

  “You don’t mess with Moses.”

  The helicopter to the right, pounding out incessant cannon fire, was also taking the full brunt of Whalen’s onslaught. It turned violently away from the airstrip, smoke and fire pouring out of it. Rizzo gave his full attention to the one bearing down on him like a dragon from the pit of hell. What do I do?

  He had no clue. There was no trigger, no button to push.

  “God, help me!”

  Rizzo was driven back against the front of the Rover as if he had been on the wrong end of a missile launch at Cape Canaveral. A blinding white streak of light leaped from the entire length of the staff and shot into the sky, slamming into the front of the attacking chopper. For a heartbeat the helicopter shimmered and lit up like a light bulb. All the air sucked toward the copter as if the world had taken a deep breath. Then it erupted into a million tiny, flaming pieces.

  “Sammy!” The voice came from down the runway.

  Shaken like a rag doll, Rizzo was now sitting on the concrete runway, as he looked at his left hand for scorch marks. His fingers tingled, but there were no burns.

  “I’mmm …”

  Rizzo had a hard time coherently connecting his brain to his tongue. “Ooookaay,” was all he could manage. But his eyes were on this marvelous stick that now lay across his lap, as cold
and inert as the bones of a dinosaur in the Natural History Museum. “Ooookaay.”

  His eyes bouncing back and forth from Kabir’s bleeding body to Rizzo’s pale white face, Tom was shaken into the present when Atkins grabbed him by the shirt and started running down the airstrip. Whalen had joined Joe next to Kabir, and Vordenberg and Annie were running in their direction with a large, first-aid kit. “Kabir’s got plenty of help,” Atkins called over his shoulder, “but the plane …”

  Tom looked to the west as he started running in Atkins’s wake. The far hangar was smoldering, a good third of it molten metal girders and shredded steel skin.

  Home. Alex!

  Before he could process his fear, Tom saw Krupp run out a side door of the hangar and race in their direction.

  “Get one of the trucks,” Krupp called. “We’ve got to pull some of the debris away from the plane.”

  A few minutes later, the surviving Land Rover had pulled aside piles of twisted metal, freeing the Gulfstream from its prison at the back of the hangar. The jet taxied downwind, to the end of the runway, as Bohannon and Atkins drove the vehicle back to the knot around Kabir. Rizzo sat on the back seat, Aaron’s staff resting across his lap, a look of shock and awe on his face. Annie was on her feet and moving toward them.

  “Kabir’s going to be okay,” she said through the driver’s window. “Shrapnel wounds in his back, but Mike stopped the bleeding and there doesn’t appear to be any internal damage.”

  Tom opened the door and swung his legs out.

  “Don’t get out,” shouted Whalen. He was jogging toward them, Vordenberg helping Kabir to his feet. “Grab what you can of your gear, and you’re getting on that plane before we have any other visitors.”

  Up the runway, Joe had swept up the small pile of packs he’d gathered earlier and was hustling in their direction, but Tom pushed the door open farther and stepped out. “Hang on a minute, Mike.” With Annie at his shoulder, he moved toward Kabir, who was hurting and hobbled, but still had a smile on his face. Tom searched his eyes. “Are you—”